By Tom WilkContributing Writer Of the pioneers of television comedy in the 1950s, Ernie Kovacs is perhaps the most overlooked. He never had a breakthrough TV series like such contemporaries as Milton Berle or Lucille Ball and never enjoyed widespread syndication of his programs after his death. Kovacs is pulled out of the historical shadows with a pair of new video releases by Shout! Factory. “The Ernie Kovacs Collection Volume 2,” a three-DVD set, and “The ABC Specials” offer an entertaining and illuminating collection of his work that showcases his comedic imagination. Born in 1919, Kovacs was a native of Trenton who got his start in New Jersey’s capital city. He worked for WTTM, a local radio station, and wrote a column for The Trentonian newspaper that showed his gift for comedy. Kovacs got his start in television in Philadelphia in the early 1950s as the host of a morning show that pushed the boundaries of the new medium. “The Ernie Kovacs Collection Volume 2” presents eight episodes of “The Ernie Kovacs Show” that aired from New York in 1956. The broadcasts, which featured his wife, entertainer Edie Adams, showed Kovacs to be a natural on the small screen, at home in front of an audience. He features a cast of his memorable characters, including Percy Dovetonsils, a foppish poet, and Skodney Silsky, Hollywood Reporter, a send-up of a gossip columnist. Kovacs was always willing to try something new and unexpected. In one episode, he persuades the show’s audience to leave their seats and trade places with him on stage. It’s bits like this that led David Letterman to cite Kovacs as one of his influences. The box set also includes three episodes of “Take a Good Look,” a quiz show hosted by Kovacs in 1960-61. The show was a comic twist on “What’s My Line?” and featured a celebrity panel trying to determine a person’s occupation or claim to fame. To assist the panel, Kovacs presented a series of comic sketches that offered clues and highlighted his love of absurdity and word play. Other features in “Volume 2” include an extended interview with Kovacs done by a Canadian television journalist in October 1961, just three months before his death in a car crash in Los Angeles at age 42. Kovacs offers an in-depth discussion of his approach to comedy and future projects that sadly never came to pass. A panel of comedians, actors and writers discusses Kovacs’ work and influence in a 2011 roundtable discussion moderated by Harry Shearer. “The ABC Specials” feature five programs that Kovacs did between September 1961 and January 1962 for ABC television. They spotlight Kovacs’ knack for surprises (“Eugene,” a half-hour special without dialog with Kovacs in the title role), sight gags (a woman enjoying a bath encounters a submarine’s periscope in her tub) and surrealism (a teacher of skin diving tries to smoke a cigar and use a typewriter in an underwater classroom). A bonus feature includes a series of Kovacs’ commercials for Dutch Masters Cigars that remain memorable and funny more than half a century later.

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